


who's gonna drown in your blue sea

by wonderwalls



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Harry Leaves, M/M, Reality, basically just the song strong except with an unnecessary amount of sad, can't stand to write sad larry endings, i don't think this is what tags are intended for, i'm kind of disgusted with myself here, it's all good in the end though, it's really just a bunch of tattoo over-analyzation, other boys not even mentioned im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1354108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwalls/pseuds/wonderwalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis spends the rest of the drive staring at the compass tattoo during every red light, wondering which way it's pointing. Wondering when it stopped leading him right back to Harry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who's gonna drown in your blue sea

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bunch of ship metaphors. So sue me. Also, a few references to the last few lines of [this](http://allpoetry.com/poem/8453753-The-Hollow-Men-by-T-S--Eliot) poem. 
> 
> Title from 'Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses' by U2

The first time it happened Louis was still shiny and new, content with camera flashes and attention and Harry's smile brighter than everything else. 

They called him and told it to him slow, like they were talking to a child. There was a folder full of glossy eight-by-tens: Harry and Louis smiling at each other from across the stage, Louis with his hands in Harry's hair, Louis nuzzling into Harry's neck as they hug after another week they survived. 

"This needs to stop," they said, and it was like Louis couldn't breathe. 

He got home to the brand new flat, where Harry was trying to finish up painting the last wall, blue on his cheek and nose and elbow, and it was like Louis knew even then they were going to drown, the way he disregarded the paint splattered on Harry's shirt and hugged him tight, just to feel him solid and sure.

"What's going on, Lou?" Harry asked. He knew, he always did. 

Louis shook his head and pulled away, forcing a smile, "You've got paint on you."

"So do you, idiot," Harry poked at the paint smeared between them. 

Louis dipped his finger straight into the can and smudged it right into Harry's dimple, and Harry's laugh was a lighthouse beam, something leading him straight back to shore. And he thought that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Harry would always be sweet and lovely and endlessly hopeful, and Louis wouldn't let them change that. 

But that was just the first time. 

-

It's funny because the X-Factor bunk was too small for the both of them, and Louis woke up most mornings with Harry pressed so tight against him that neither of them could breathe without falling off the edge. And now the bed is far, far too big for Louis, and it's empty, and he gets all the blankets he wants, and he still can't breathe. Maybe it's because he never really did until he saw Harry smile that first time, because without him there's something heavy on his chest. 

And it's been four days and Harry hasn't come back, and Louis isn't sure if this is how it ends. _Not with a bang but a whimper,_ is the saying, and he thinks that might be true. Because it was a cold kind of collapse, slow and careful and all together too quiet. There were no slamming doors, Louis realizes. No yelling or fighting or hot anger. They were both too tired for any of that, worn down by the heavy silence that was only punctured in small chunks by interviews and shows. 

There were nights when Harry would reach across the bed that had become an ocean between them and link their fingers, like it was enough to keep them afloat, and Louis tried so hard to believe it, to hold onto that desperate hope Harry kept alive. And there were nights when both of them had burnt out- had burnt through each other- and neither of them quite had the strength for fighting. 

Louis isn't sure what was worse. 

-

They wouldn't take him from Harry, it was impossible. It was him and his boy, and they both knew that, and the sneaking around kept things exciting. Making out five seconds before the cameras started rolling, fucking Harry so hard he stayed in a daze all through a signing, sneaky glances across the stage. 

Then it got hard, really hard. Interviewers fired questions at Harry about the girl-of-the-week and Louis watched, powerless as the person he loved most in the world wilted just a little bit more every time. And Louis would gladly endure the dates with Eleanor if it meant taking just a little bit of the strain off of Harry, but it didn't help at all, just made it so when Louis came home Harry looked anywhere but his eyes. And that stung at Louis' insides, losing him piece by piece like that. 

The questions didn't stop and it was never enough for those damn suits, never far enough, never platonic enough. Harry was eighteen when he stamped it on himself in big letters, branded himself, Things He Can't. 

One night Louis couldn't bear it and he pulled Harry close, trying not to feel the way Harry tensed for a minute, so unlike the old familiar falling into each other. Louis said to him, "I won't let them take you, please don't leave me," and Harry nodded and gripped tight to the hem of his shirt and they stayed like that for hours. 

It didn't change anything, in the end. 

-

Louis goes to see his mum because he can't stand another visit from one of the boys. They've been checking up on him, alternating nights, and he knows there's always one with Harry too. He doesn't ask about him because he isn't sure he wants to know the answer. But it starts to make Louis sick, the way all of them have started looking at him like he's going to kill himself if they leave him alone too long. 

The house is so familiar that Louis could cry at the sight of it. He doesn't, of course, because he's taken great pride in not falling apart through this whole ordeal. He hasn't had a single meltdown, just more silence. Louis prefers not to think about what kind of person that makes him. 

Any sense of manliness he maintained evaporates with the smell of laundry and tea and baking and _home,_ and Phoebe tackling his legs at the door with Daisy close behind. Louis sinks to the ground and hugs them both tight, "Hi, girls, how's Mum been treating you?"

"Beatings daily, and all that," comes the familiar voice from the kitchen doorway. 

"Mum," Louis sighs. It's like just the sight of her can melt away the stress of adulthood, like Louis is seven-years-old again with a skinned knee, refusing to cry in front of the neighbor boys, but his mother never said a word if he let out a few tears while she patched him up. And she's patched him up so many times that it's hard not to run straight to her at every situation. 

"How are you doing, baby?" she asks when he buries his face in her shoulder and just breathes in the smell of safety. 

"Been better, you know," he says quietly. 

The reunion is cut short when Fizzy and Lottie barge in. Lottie runs over and hugs him, and Fizzy pretends to not care that much because she's at that age. Louis gets it so he gives her a cool nod and she shrugs back, ducking her head to hide her smile. 

"What are you doing home?" Lottie asks. 

"What, I can't just come see my favorite girls for the hell of it?" Louis ruffles her hair, making her frown. 

"Lou!" Phoebe chimes in. "Look, I just lost my tooth!" 

Louis kneels down and looks at her wide open mouth where she's pointing. "Wow, Phoebs, that's crazy! You're gonna have all your adult teeth before you know it."

"The tooth fairy gave me two pounds," she says proudly. 

"Oh really?" Louis says, his hand on his chest. "I only got one pound for my lost teeth!" He glances over at his mum and shoots her a glare.

"Girls, why don't you go play upstairs, Louis and I are going to catch up," Jay says. They go obediently, except for Daisy, who sticks out her tongue on the way out. 

Louis follows Jay into the kitchen and she pours him a cup of tea. "Now," she says, sitting across from him at the table. "Tell me about your boy."

It's funny that she knows immediately. Louis wonders if he's always been that obvious when it comes to Harry, thinks he probably has. He looks at the flowers on the windowsill, all brown and withered because his mother has never been able to keep a plant alive for more than two days. "He's not my boy anymore."

-

She sends him off with a plate of fresh cookies and a hug, whispering, "You've never been one to give up, Lou." And then it's quiet again, so painfully quiet after Daisy wailing about Phoebe cutting off her Barbie's hair. 

Louis turns on the radio to fill the silence, and by some cruel twist of fate or maybe just terrible coincidence, What Makes You Beautiful is playing. He immediately jabs at the button to turn it off. Why the hell are they still playing that stupid song, Louis thinks. He remembers it like it was from another lifetime, when Harry was content under his arm and looked at him like he was made of something precious. It's all too easy to fall back into the comfort of nostalgia. 

Louis drives and he's suddenly terrified of where he's going, where he'll end up. Harry was certainty; he was something solid through every city on the map; he was the ship that led him back home, and-

The ship that led him back home. 

Louis spends the rest of the drive staring at the compass tattoo during every red light, wondering which way it's pointing. Wondering when it stopped leading him right back to Harry.

-

Louis started kissing Harry hard, a punishment for both of them for losing it along the way. There was nothing gentle in the way he dug his fingers into Harry's sides until they bruised, forcing pieces of himself straight into Harry's skin, refusing to let him forget Louis even if he wanted to. It was selfish; it was self-preservation; it was all he had. 

He finds himself wondering if Harry is still marked with Louis, hoping he is. 

-

"He's been gone a week now," Louis tells the bartender. "Week, seven days. S'not that long, s'it?" 

"I mean, if you're counting by seconds and minutes and hours, I guess it adds up," the guy says. So wise, Louis thinks. All bartenders must have taken, like, philosophy courses or something, because all the ones in movies are damn geniuses. This one seems okay.

"Mm," Louis agrees. He rests his head on the cool counter. He hears his heartbeat in his throbbing skull. "Fucked me over, for sure. He's- he's my swallow, y'know? Swallows mate for life, he said. Got that damn tattoo and everything, fucking sappy idiot. Harry Styles, you've probably heard of him. Massive pop star. Gets all the girls." Louis laughs. "All the girls, and me. S'too bad, y'know, 'cause he was the- the _best_ but I've- ruined it all-"

Louis notices the bartender putting down a phone and wonders if he'd been on it the whole time. 

"Are you listening to me?" he demands. Rude of the guy, really, to not pay attention to him. Louis is fucking important.

"Course, mate."

"Yeah," Louis sighs. "Harry Styles. Dreamboat."

Just then arms are wrapping around him and pulling him to his feet, "C'mon Lou, it's time to go."

"No," Louis mumbles. 

"Thanks for calling," Zayn says to something behind them. 

"Anytime," comes the answer. 

"Zaynnn," Louis slurs into the boy's shirt. "Zayn, I miss him."

"I know you do. Let's get you home, yeah?"

"Will Harry be there?"

"Not tonight, Lou," Zayn sighs. 

Louis thinks, _then it's not home,_ but he can't remember how to get the words out of his mouth, and he forgets everything else after that. 

-

It's late when the door opens, and there's an all-too familiar thud of someone's foot hitting the bottom of the doorframe (he never fucking learned, such an idiot) and a hiss of pain. 

Louis is still drunk, is the logical explanation for this. He squeezes his eyes shut and listens to heavy footsteps on the carpet and the sound of a few drawers opening and closing, and suddenly he can't bring himself to block it out anymore. 

"Haz?" Louis says thickly. 

There's a sharp intake of breath through the dark and Louis' heart seizes up. 

Things I Can't, Louis thinks. Things I Never Could. 

"What are you doing here?"

"I- I just needed to pick up a few things." The voice is too real, too _Harry_ to be a hallucination. And Louis feels his heart plummet until it's sitting in his stomach, _needed to pick up a few things._

He's not coming back he's not coming back he's not coming back don't let him leave, Louis' brain short-circuits. 

"Don't- don't go," Louis manages, always too stupidly honest when it comes to Harry. 

"I'm sorry, I really am," Harry is saying quietly, and Louis hears rustling and then a long, heavy pause before the door opens- the faint light outside the bedroom frames his silhouette, the broad line of his back- and closes behind him.

Louis gets up several minutes later and flicks the light back on, wanders out into the hallway of the building. He's long gone by now. 

Louis realizes he's been left twice by the ship, and now he's just plain lost at sea. 

-

The anchor tattoo was the last attempt at a love that was already sunk. Louis remembers the way Harry held it up next to his own rope and didn't say a word, just traced the ink over both their skin and breathed in deep breaths. Louis had looked at him long and nodded, a false reassurance but one they both needed. 

(Harry cried that night. Louis gripped onto him and made promises that had already been broken for quite a long time.)

-

A week before Harry left, Louis sat with him in the car and they listened to every single song off the old Coldplay albums and they talked for hours, about anything and everything except the things that mattered. Louis realized that in all the falling apart they forgot to talk to each other, forgot that they were best friends too. 

Louis went into fine detail about his views on Tammy the lights coordinator who the whole band is pretty sure is out to get them ("I swear to God, H, she knows exactly what shade of yellow lighting makes me look all pasty. Like you.") Harry had laughed and posted an Instagram picture of the rain-streaked car window. It felt almost like 2010 again, with Harry's eyes shining in the passenger seat as they drove nowhere. 

-

It was a Thursday when Harry left. Louis watched him walk out the door, "I'm so, so sorry, Lou, I just- can't." He couldn't find another excuse for him to stay short of screaming out, "Don't you know I'm still madly in love with you," and Louis liked to believe he had more class about things like that. 

Harry was gone before Louis could say goodbye. 

-

Louis breaks in the kitchen. 

He pours himself a bowl of cereal and opens the fridge and there's no milk. It's technically his job, his only assigned duty of the household, but he forgot too many times and Harry always bought it after the first few weeks anyway. And there's this big bowl of dry Lucky Charms in his hands and he hasn't bought milk since Harry left. 

"Fuck," Louis mumbles. 

He sits on the tile and cries his eyes out.

-

Two days before Harry left he was standing and looking out the window and he said, "It's really big out there, huh."

"Yeah," Louis said from the doorway. 

"And we're like, really, really small," Harry said. 

Louis came up behind him and wrapped his arms around his waist and Harry was like the sun: distant and warm and there. "It's okay." Louis kissed his shoulder. "It's fine."

It felt an awful lot like saying goodbye. 

-

Louis remembers in the kitchen too. 

It's been three weeks and there's an episode of Celebrity Big Brother playing on TV and Louis looks over to crack a joke to Harry about the absolute bitchiness of one of the girls, and there's nobody there. And he wonders what the hell happened to them. Thinks about how _stupid_ it all is. Because they're just boys, in the end, they're just lovesick boys in a little bit over their heads. 

But it hasn't stopped them before. 

And then he realizes, it isn't the end. Louis looks at the compass tattoo and hears his mother saying, "you've never been one to give up, Lou," and he thinks, not with a whimper but a _bang_. Because they could go out like this, lonely and lost, or they can fight. And Louis sure as hell isn't letting it die out slow and sad. And maybe it's going to crash and burn, but either way it will be as big and loud and disruptive as they both deserve. They're going to save this damn thing or die trying. 

Louis is at Harry's decoy flat, the one he hadn't used in years until the whole mess, in four minutes. He looks down and realizes he is wearing his pajamas, and he hasn't shaved, and he's probably got bags under his eyes the size of Australia. He doesn't care. 

There's a long pause after Louis knocks. He waits, his heart thudding, blood in his veins turning to saltwater. 

The door swings open and Harry is standing there with a loose long sleeved shirt and plaid pajama pants and messy hair, looking so soft and tired that Louis absolutely aches inside. And he just _missed_ him, is all. It feels like it's been years since he's seen him, really seen him, without that pop star veil of unreachability. 

"Lou?" he says, quiet and rough, and Louis just-

He just can't stand it, so he reaches out, only hesitates a second before grabbing Harry and pulling him close and gripping on as hard as he can. Harry's chest is solid and warm and Louis just breathes for a moment. 

"I missed you," Louis says into the smell of apple shampoo. "I missed you so much, Haz, please, just- just come back."

It seems to take a few seconds before it registers, Harry still stiff and rigid against him. Then he seems to crumble, holding onto Louis just as tight. 

"Louis," he whispers. They stand like that, re-remembering each other for a long time. 

"Okay," Louis steps back, and Harry stumbles forward for a moment before catching himself. "Okay. Listen to me, okay?"

Harry nods. 

"We can't just- sit around and be sorry for ourselves. Because it's shit, Harry, it really is. And I'm so, so sorry I can't make it easier, but this is what we chose to do, remember? And I've messed it up a lot, but you have too, and we can't just leave anymore, okay? We can't just- stop being there. Like, babe, it's hard. And I think it's gonna be really hard for a really long time." Louis takes a breath. "But, you know, I'm ready to fight. Every day. I don't care. I'll fight for us. Like, if you will, I mean. If you'll come back home."

Things They Can.

Harry looks at him for a long time and then he starts crying, wiping at his face with his sleeve. 

"Harry," Louis says. It's the only word that he seems to remember. 

Harry buries his face in Louis' shoulder and takes deep breaths. "Let's go home," he says. 

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

-

When Louis wakes up there is milk in the fridge and a boy in the bed. It feels like being found.

**Author's Note:**

> god why am i doing this this is so lifetime movie of me,,,....
> 
> thanks for reading you amazing people!!!


End file.
